Honoring Pride Month and Our LGBTQ+ Creators!
Hello everyone, this is Catherine, the founder of MiM Mag!
For Pride Month, I wanted to do something special and shine a light on a couple of members of my team who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. In honoring our contributors, I hope to honor their community and the history and struggles of that community. This month, they celebrate their community’s pride in their collective overcoming of adversity as they fight for equal treatment and equal rights. And I wish to celebrate with the community as we (me and this organization) continue to fight alongside them to help amplify their voices to create meaningful change.
So, I asked a couple of our amazing contributors if they would like to share how they describe their sexuality and/or what Pride means to them personally and what they work on through the magazine, and what they hope to accomplish in their work.
These people are awesome with what they do and are doing some amazing things to make the world a better place! Here are their stories!
Amber Giroux
“Pride for me represents freedom. Freedom to be who I am and to be open to new experiences. When someone asks me which “box” I fit into, I generally will answer with something vague like “I’m here, and I’m queer!” Having serious trust and abandonment issues limits how much I put myself out in the dating scene, whether I’m queer or not. Pride for me represents the power of the journey to self-discovery and respects the process and never says hurry up and choose!”
“I share my most difficult life experiences in my writings with the hope that it will help others in their personal journey through life.”
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Amber is a writer on our team who is currently working on a series where she shares and discusses her experience being a domestic violence survivor, trying to shed a light on the issue through her firsthand accounts and opening up the conversation for others.
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Emily Sims
“Pride always holds a special place in my heart as I’ve only just recently come to terms with my sexuality. Finally having a term and a community to explain what I feel inside makes me more confident in who I am. Being Asexual (#spaceace) has really changed my life for the better. For those of you who don’t know what asexuality is, “Asexuality is defined as a lack of sexual attraction; an asexual is someone who is not sexually attracted to anyone.”
I found out that I was Ace when I was in highschool, though I think I’ve always known. I just never felt the same way about sex like all my friends who were loosing their virginity. They tried, though with good heart, to find someone for me but my heart just wasn’t in it. There was no one I connected with because there was no physical attraction. Which is something that I thought was necessary in a relationship. I thought there was something wrong with me. I was too different from everyone else.
Turns out, thanks to Tumblr actually, I discovered what asexuality was. I had known about LGBT but never in my life had I heard about asexuality. Ever since then everything just clicked. I didn’t have to feel like there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to have sex like all my peers. I didn’t have to hide and lie saying the reason I haven’t done anything was because I was ‘looking for the right one’. And I didn’t have to pretend to be something I’m not. I’m Ace and I’m proud of who I am. Be proud of who you are and know you are not alone.”
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On top of creating written content, Emily also contributes her amazing art skills to the team – from creating the art pieces her and I made in February 2020 from the Trash Dash, to making some of our previous social media posts.
Emily is a criminal justice major hoping to both bring awareness to and share her passion for her areas of interest through her content, including: criminal justice policy reform, education (particularly at the college level), writing (poetry and long-form fiction), music, film, and video games!
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Lucy Slattery
“My name is Lucy and I identify as Lucy. While I believe that gender identity and sexual orientation labels can help individuals find grounding, understanding and community with their individual identities – I have personally always found labels to be restricting and confusing.
I am very fluid in my life in general, I can never make up my mind as my ideas and views change and develop on what seems like a daily basis. In regards to sexual preference I have always struggled with placing myself into a particular category. I am attracted to ALL types of people and I’m happily married to a man.
In regards to gender I always have a hard time deciding. I never feel like a man but I don’t like identifying as female and I cringe every time I have to check that box on a form. At the end of the day I am most comfortable identifying as just Lucy, but as I can pass as a straight female I want to express that I do struggle with watching my fellow queer humans endure so much hate and social injustice just the same.
Through the MiM platform I look to connect with and inspire like minded individuals who want to have an ongoing conversation about all types of topics so that we may learn and grow together.”
Lucy is a writer on our team that focuses on the topics of mental health, self-improvement, self-love, and environmental issues! She also works on some of our social media posts, as of May 2021.
#GetinMotion for Pride Month
We hope you enjoyed learning a little about some of our amazing contributors for Pride Month and hearing their perspectives on what pride means to them and how they describe themselves!
If you want to see the content they’ve made, please click their headings above or visit the following links:
Amber: https://mimmag.com/author/amberg/
Emily: https://mimmag.com/author/amberg/
Lucy: https://mimmag.com/author/lucci/
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As Pride Month comes to a close, we must remember to continue to support and fight for the LGBTQ+ community all year long, not just for a month out of the year. This is important now more than ever. This means uplifting and amplifying the voices of those that are oppressed and who fight for the right to be treated equally, with dignity and respect in this world. And it means standing up for those who are marginalized or treated as second-class citizens while standing against those who wish to marginalize or harm them.
Call out hate. Call out bigotry. And call out mistreatment.
Silence is violence.
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Please check out some of these amazing organizations working to help the LGBTQ+ community!
Local:
The Center LV
PFLAG – Las Vegas Chapter
National:
The Trevor Project
Trans LifeLine
GLAD
GLSEN
It Gets Better Project
Pride Foundation
Transgender Law Center
National Center for Transgender Quality
